America in Danger of Losing Lead in AI, Innovation Board Chair Says

Artificial intelligence is the new frontier, and the Defense Department must invest in this breakthrough or be in danger of not being competitive in the future, said Eric Schmidt, the chairman of the Defense Innovation Board, during a discussion at the Center for a New American Security today.

Schmidt, who also served as the chief executive officer of Google and parent company Alphabet, said of all the recommendations the board made, the most important was that DoD needs to catch up in AI.

He used vision as an example, saying that computers already can watch monotonous things for a long time and then notify a human if something out of the ordinary happens. Tests show, he said, that humans doing the same thing make errors a third of the time. Letting computers do this “seems like the simplest possible thing,” Schmidt said. “And yet, we have this whole tradition of the military standing watch … as if that is a good use of human being.”